The determined effort by government to provide good governance through due diligence, accountability and transparency alternately spawned the need to begin public sector reforms and the integration of all ministries, parastatals, departments and agencies in Nigeria. In many forums and debates, it was held as one of the pathways to fast track the realization of our aspirations as a global eNation.
In 2001, the United Nations in its e-readiness report was unequivocal on the benefits derivable from authenticating and articulating the various platforms that will ensure the growth and sustenance of eNations as the knowledge economy increasingly swayed the world to new heights.
And so in year 2003, the government of Nigeria moved to establish The National eGovernment Strategies Limited - NeGSt., with Dr. Olu Agunloye; a product of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT in the USA, as the effective and substantive chief executive and head of operations. He was chief operating officer for seven years, at the Federal Road Safety Corp.
With the mandate to implement the Nigerian eGovernment programme, the new agency set out on its task to build, implement and sustain the various platforms it had crafted, drawing from the experiences of countries such as Singapore , Malaysia , the United States and even South Africa .
For its operations, the agency drew from the three levels of funding made available from shareholders that include banks such as UBA, EcoBank, Wema, Afribank, GTB and Skyebank. There are pioneer or blind investors as well as those that can be described as intellectual property owners. The lot includes technical solution providers and consultants who contributed to various aspects of the national e-government project that was taking root.
Funds also came from specific projects such as the Teachers' Registration Project nurtured by Skyebank and the e-immigration by a consortium of four banks.There is also the 10% shareholding by the government of Nigeria that is held in trust by the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology through NITDA, charged with the promotion of standards and regulations in all IT issues.
Partners in Commerce, Industry, Finance, Oil and Gas sectors of the economy as well as Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government have all looked to the benefits and are plugging in to share in the harvest of bounties listed in various NeGSt initiatives.
NeGSt is also set to bountifully reap from the various e-projects it has initiated in the 42 months that it had existed. Key among these is the eNYCS, developed for the National Youth Service Corp and financed by Afribank to enhance data on youth service placements and operations in Nigeria .
The ePassport programme developed for the Nigerian Immigration Department and financed by Skye Bank as it eliminates multiple acquisition, identity theft and forgery seen in the system will provide timely immigration data bank in the country. The ECOWAS platform for e-vehicle licensing developed by the agency has only recently been demonstrated. While it has been commended for robust character and content, it stands recommended for adoption by member states as a way of fostering better trade relations. vehicular movement and registration. All of these fall in the e-projects that we can point to in recent times.
Other eSuites developed by NeGSt include those that will ensure the efficiency and functionality of the different layers of the country's economy as well as citizen-centric schemes. The pensions automation scheme, spun to eliminate the lopsided method in use presently lends credence to efforts being made at developing and entrenching a viable scheme.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Hilda Esin
Quelle/Source: AllAfrica, 07.11.2007
